Democratic Congressional candidate Raul Ruiz, who was arrested for his role in a violent protest on Thanksgiving Day, 1997, doesn't want voters in California's 36th Congressional District to know what he said at a 1999 "Day of Mourning" rally.
Breitbart News has obtained a copy of an audio tape from that 1999 speech when Ruiz (pictured above far left at his 1997 arraignment) proclaimed his support for Leonard Peltier, convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents:
What is Leonard Peltier accused of?Leonard Peltier’s most serious “crime” is that he seeks to rescue in the past, in his culture, in his roots, the history of his people, the Lakota. And for the powerful, this is a crime, because knowing oneself with history impedes one from being tossed around by this absurd machine that is the system.If Leonard Peltier is guilty, than we are all guilty because we seek out history, and on its shoulders we fight to have a place in the world, a place of dignity and respect, a place for ourselves exactly as we are, which is also very much as we were.If the Indian people of the North and Indian people of Mexico, as well as the indigenous people of the entire continent, know that we have our own place (being who we are, not pretending to be another skin color, another tongue, another culture), what is left is that other colors that populate the entire world know it. And what is left is for the powerful to know it. So that they know it, and learn the lesson so well that they won’t forget, many more paths and bridges are needed that are walked from below.On these paths and bridges, you, Leonard Peltier, have a special place, the best, next to us who are like you.Salud, Leonard Peltier, receive a hug from one who admires and respects you, and who hopes that one day you will call him “brother.”
At a recent debate with incumbent Congressman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Ruiz was singing a very different tune. To hear him tell it, he's never been a supporter of convicted FBI agent killer Peltier:
